Egypt’s Blasphemy Laws–Still a Bad Idea

It’s a strange variation on a common theme in post-revolution Egypt: the country’s burdensome laws against blasphemy are being used to punish anti-Christian hate speech.

A hard-line Muslim cleric received an 11-year suspended sentence Sunday for tearing up and burning a Bible, Egypt’s official news agency said.

Cairo’s Nasr City court sentenced Ahmed Abdullah and his son was given a suspended sentence of eight years over the same incident, the Middle East News Agency reported. The two were ordered to pay a fine of 5,000 Egyptian pounds ($700). The ruling can be appealed.

Abdullah ripped up a Bible and burned it during a Sept. 11 rally by ultraconservative Salafi Muslims in front of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, protesting an anti-Islam film produced in the United States. (AP)

In Egypt’s Islamist tilt, these laws have increasingly been applied against Egypt’s Coptic Christians, a religious minority comprising about ten percent of the country. Earlier this month a Coptic Christian lawyer, Rumany Mourad, was sentenced to one year in prison for “defamation of religion” on the basis of a private conversation he had at a law library with two of his Muslim colleagues. Hearings in the case were reportedly “characterized by a heavy presence of Islamist lawyers and their supporters,” one of whom suggested the death penalty, reports Amnesty International.

Last Tuesday, an elementary school teacher, Dimyana Obeid Abd Al Nour, 24, was fined US$14,000 after her students accused her of praising the Coptic Pope and disparaging Mohammed in the classroom.

A Coptic activist asked at the time of Al Nour’s imprisonment, “Why is defamation of religion a one-way street, only for the benefit of the Muslims, while Christianity is defamed every day?” He pointed out that Ahmed Abdullah’s public Bible defamation had gone unpunished.

His question is a fair question, but not the right question. With Abdullah’s conviction, Egypt’s blasphemy laws have been used, for once, to protect Christians from hate speech instead of censure them, but this is no cause for celebration. Blasphemy laws themselves, and not their application, are the problem.

“This ruling is bad,” says Nina Shea, a Hudson Institute scholar who has written a book about blasphemy laws. “The whole blasphemy regime is bad. Minorities get prosecuted disproportionately, and it’s a way of shutting down debate. You could say, ‘Well, burning Bibles, burning Korans should be off limits.’ It never seems to end there. It’s a slippery slope towards banning ideas about religion and expressing rejection of religion.”

“It’s tempting for religious people to be demanding,” she says, noting that as a religious person she finds Abdullah’s actions abhorrent. “That’s the problem, though—it creates sectarian sense of grievances.”

“They think that they can gain greater social peace if the government regulates speech against other religions,” she explains. “Usually that is not the case—just the opposite, it creates jealousy and grievances.” When one religious group sees a member convicted of blasphemy, she explains, it can use that precedent to call for the prosecution of another group.

Moreover, once the government takes a role in regulating religious expression, it rarely sticks to policing the extremes. “The temptation is always to go further to curtail speech and expression,” explains Shea. “You can’t contain this once you go in that direction.”

As tempting as it may be for Egyptian Christians to feel relief at receiving seeming equal protection under the law, no one should praise this ruling. The equal prosecution of blasphemy is at once far too low, and impossibly difficult, a standard to keep.

Elf, that concern demonstrates a lack of understanding of both Egyptian history and its current climate. Not even 20 years ago, Egypt was culturally very cosmopolitan and non-sectarian. Even just before the revolution, tensions between Christians and Muslims were not very high. It is no more close to a religious war in Egypt than it is here.

If anything could provoke a much larger and more violent religious conflict in Egypt, it’s the legal empowerment of religious persecution in these blasphemy laws. Egypt just went through a wild revolution due to civil unrest with an unfair, undemocratic regime. Of course it’s ready for religious liberty: it’s ready to take back the liberties it once had not even that long ago!

“Even just before the revolution, tensions between Christians and Muslims were not very high.”

Thanks for weighing in, Michael; I know you have extensive knowledge of Egypt. However, this strikes me as completely wrong: Human rights organizations repeatedly noted a toxic religious environment in the years leading up to the revolution. Here’s Human Rights Watch in 2010:

The year opened with a distressing display of the growing religious intolerance in the country, illustrated most recently by the killing of six Coptic Christians in Nag’ Hammadi on January 6. The police arrested three suspects, whom the North Qena prosecutor charged with “premeditated murder.”

Over the past years, the government has failed to investigate properly and prosecute those responsible for the increasing number of incidents of sectarian violence, Human Rights Watch said….The government has also failed to support a much needed campaign of respect and tolerance for religious diversity to counter negative stereotyping and incitement to religious hatred in school curricula, the media, and religious institutions.

It is correct that anti-blasphemy laws shouldn’t be used to prosecute people for either anti-Muslim or anti-Christian speech. But…and this is a big but… did this radical Muslim cleric help to lead the protests at the U.S. Embassy in which some of the protesters actually scaled the walls of the embassy? If he did help to lead the protests, then he should be punished in some way. The U.S. government may have even asked the Egyptian government to go after those who led the protests. The Egyptian government unfortunately decided to use anti-blasphemy laws to go after this Muslim cleric and his son. I hope the Egyptian government also prosecuted those protesters who scaled the walls of the embassy and gave them harsher punishments than was given to this Muslim cleric.

Laws against burning the Koran and the Bible are wrong, but I don’t think that they are any worse than laws against burning the U.S. flag. The U.S. Supreme Court declared that laws against burning the U.S. flag are unconstitutional, but many Americans still support them. The problem with anti-blasphemy laws aren’t just that they violate freedom of speech, but that most people, especially Christians, who are accused of blasphemy aren’t even guilty of the acts. Radical Muslims often use anti-blasphemy laws just as an excuse to persecute Christians. These radical Muslims also often want to execute the accused or give them long prison sentences, both of which are much harsher than punishments that would be given for burning the U.S. flag. Theoretically, I would be for laws against all kinds of public rabble-rousing, including burning flags and holy books, which would just be misdemeanors that carry no jail time, but the potential for abuse is just too great.

I wonder how many readers are aware that many of our states had blasphemy laws as late as the 1970’s. They were very rarely if ever enforced of course.

It seems to me that such laws in traditional societies have there place. This is not to say that polite discussion of theology should be suppressed anywhere, but where homogenous cultures have deeply held faiths I see nothing wrong with prohibitions against incitement.

M_Young. Britain had blasphemy laws as well. What they have now is a legal regime suppressing traditional belief while privileging outsiders.

I think the Romans had some equivalent of blasphemy laws that reflected their rather open ended view of the gods. That is, it was bad form to insult any god or cult unless they were adjudged to be antisocial or barbaric.

What was not permitted were acts deemed likely to upset any sort of divine entity as the Romans never put too much faith in any one such entity but had a serious suspicion that there were powers beyond man who were not to be trifled with.